Tamby deserves a short-term deal, two years at most . . .

President of Hockey Operations Kevin Lowe announced today the Edmonton Oilers have agreed to terms on a new contract for General Manager Steve Tambellini.

Kevin Lowe says, “Three years ago we asked Steve to begin a rebuild which we all know hasn’t been easy. However, Oilers fans can take some consolation in the fact that Steve and his staff have acquired some amazing talent which will most definitely be the cornerstone to future sustained success for the Edmonton Oilers.”

My take?

I’ll give you the long view first …

The Edmonton Oilers have a new-ish plan, one that owner Daryl Katz, hockey boss Kevin Lowe and general manager Steve Tambellini have all bought into since the winter of 2009-10, when the previous plan fell apart.

The previous plan – which the vast majority of Oilers fans supported in whole or in part for years – was to do what the team had done in summer of 2005 in acquiring Chris Pronger and Mike Peca in trades.

It was all about whale-hunting. The misguided notion was to go after the best possible players through trades and free agency. It had worked in 2005-06, making Oilers management and Oilers fans reluctant to see anything but a continuation of the same.

It proved to be a failed strategy, mainly because no all-star talent wanted to come to a mediocre franchise, and if any star was going to come, it would only be on a deal that paid him the sun, the moon, and all the stars. Such was the foolish deal waved at Hossa, when Katz first bought the team in July 2008.

I recall being at the press conference where Katz announced he was the owner, and he and Lowe yukked it up about their pursuit of Hossa. Katz had promised Oilers fans he would spend to the cap and deliver big things. It was the exact wrong strategy, but that was to be his course.

Why was this plan so off-base?

The less stellar players than Hossa who did agree to come here, such as Khabibulin and Souray, would only come here on over-paying contracts. Such contracts hamper a team in this era of a hard salary cap. Teams have limited financial resources, so if money is directed towards under-performing veterans, a team will find it difficult to challenge for the Stanley Cup.

It became utterly clear to everyone – Oilers management and fans alike – in the winter of 2009 that this plan, rooted in the whale-hunting successes of 2005-06, had failed.

A new course was charted, to try to build the team through the draft, to find their whales that way, and through prudent acquisitions of support players. It’s not clear to me which Oilers hockey boss decided enough was enough and it was time to rebuild. Oilers announcer Bob Stauffer has given the credit to Katz.

It was certainly obvious to many fans by then that this was the only sound course of action.

This current management team is following Katz’s new plan. As a group, they’re all learning-on-the-job how to get it right.

They have done well to take the heat and not make short-term moves to try and improve the team. The team’s amateur drafting has also been generally successful.

But this management group has done extremely poorly in one regard. Their acquisitions and trades involving pro players have generally been mediocre-to-terrible. Kurtis Foster, Patrick O’Sullivan, Colin Fraser, Eric Belanger, Jim Vandermeer — the list is long and painful of the inadequate players that have been brought in to bolster the current team.

Is this alone reason to get rid of the current management team?

The number of misses this management team has had when it comes to trades and signings is indeed troubling. The trading away of Dustin Penner and Tom Gilbert don’t sit well with me, either. That said, there have been no moves that have set back the essential focus of the rebuild, which has been to suffer but acquire top-end talent through the draft. Now another first overall pick is on the way. At the same time, the team did show improvement this year in some key areas.

The Oilers only moved up one place in the team rankings this year, but won seven more games. The team’s goal differential at even strength improved from minus-39 to minus-27, a significant jump.

The Oilers’ special teams shot up, too. The power play went from a 14.8-per-cent success rate and 27th place to a 20.6-per-cent success rate and third overall ranking. On the penalty kill, the Oilers went from a 77-per-cent clearance rate and a 29th ranking, to a 82.4-per-cent rate and a 14th ranking.

The team’s scoring chance numbers also improved. In 2010-11, the Oilers were out chanced 19.1 to 14.8 per game. This year, it was just 18.4 to 15.7 per game.

I’d say the team showed enough improvement this year that Tambellini merits a new deal, but a short one, no more than two years. He has simply got to show that he and his pro scouts can get the job done this summer and fall, making the right moves to push this team to a playoff contender in 2012-13. It’s time.

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